


Dead and Alive

by Sad Cowboy Malone (NobleMalone)



Series: Blood, Hatred, Money, and Rage [3]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Arthur Morgan's Broken Dick, Bad Man Dutch, Bottom Arthur, Canon-Typical Violence, Childbirth, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Intercrural Sex, John Marston's Sabbatical, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Protective Arthur Morgan, a big old bummer with no........ redemption, but in like a really sad way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 07:54:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17845436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NobleMalone/pseuds/Sad%20Cowboy%20Malone
Summary: He didn’t tell her, then, that he didn’t sleep much anyhow, not anymore. Didn’t tell her that if it weren’t nightmares of John’s corpse swinging from a Joshua tree, it was vague memory-dreams of hands parting his thighs to spread him open and the sick, gutless feeling of being pushed into like the slow slide of a knife through raw meat. He didn’t tell her that he weren’t much worried about rest, now. Didn’t tell her that he was already miserable.---Dutch had raised him up right, but something about it had always felt wrong.





	Dead and Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags; this is a direct sequel to the other two pieces in the series.

_It takes a lot to know a man_  
_It takes a lot to understand_  
_The warrior, the sage_  
_The little boy in rage_

 

 

The night Jack'd been born, there’d been no moon, and the night had seemed to stretch on for an eternity, made long and unbearable by the nervous what-if of it all.

 

John and Arthur both had been banished from the birthing tent by Ms Rebecca, and they hadn’t argued when she’d shooed them away – for all the blood on their hands, neither of them had been sure he could handle himself when the baby began to come in earnest. Just seeing Abigail leaned against a tree, groaning through contractions as if she’d been gutshot, had made Arthur’s heart seize up in sympathy.

 

But for as anxious as Arthur’d been, he’d kept it to a low simmer, chain smoking and sipping on piss whiskey as he’d watched John pace nervously – seven steps one way, a slow swivel, seven steps back, over and over again.

 

“Christ, Marston, you’re gunna wear a hole straight through to China like that,” Arthur had complained, more to fill the air with something other than snapping, anxious electricity than to actually chide him. When he’d offered the bottle though, John’d taken it, nearly drained the damned thing before he’d settled to sit by the dying fire.

 

“You’re fussin’ over nothing. Abigail’s a stubborn cuss; she’ll get that baby born right in no time.”

 

He’d tried to sound confident, but it’d rung hollow even in his own ears. They both knew the kind of thing that could go wrong, birthing a baby – John might’ve known it better than most. Being stuck out in the sticks didn’t help, either, without so much as a water pump or a proper shitter for miles.

 

They’d been damn lucky to have Ms Rebecca riding with them, then; Jack might not have made it without her, as useless as the rest of them were. She’d been a slave midwife before the war and had supported Abigail all through the pregnancy the way none of them could've, quiet and firm but motherly in her affections. She was good people, and even now, Arthur longs for her fried okra and chitlins on cold, gloomy days.

 

“I just worry, is all,” John’d said, quiet, as if he’d been talking more to himself than to Arthur. “With what happened to my mama, what if –“

 

“John, don’t.”

 

John had sighed a lungful of smoke and flicked the butt of his burned down cigarette into the glowing embers of the fire. Leaned in close  to light a fresh one off the end of Arthur’s, looking old beyond his years in the dim light the fire’d provided. Arthur supposed they both looked it, worn down with the weight of everything that’d happened to them, a lifetime of hardships packed into a few short decades.

 

“You’re right, I know,” John’d said. “I just worry that I – I don’t wanna be like my daddy was. Not just how he was bitter ‘n’ mean but… He didn’t raise me up good. Didn’t do right by me. You know what he did to me.

 

“What if he … what if he put it in me, somehow? What if the baby comes and I get, I get like _that_? I don’t wanna be a father like that, I – I just wanna do right by this baby.”

 

“I know.” It was rare Arthur ever saw John this open, soft and vulnerable like a boy, the way he hadn’t been in a long, long time. He hadn’t known what to say.

 

“I’m scared, is all.”

 

“You ain’t gotta be,” Arthur’d replied, and he’d put his hand on John’s skinny shoulder, firm and reassuring. “You got the lot of us to watch out for the little feller. Ain’t nothin’ bad gunna happen to that baby, by you or anyone else.”

 

“Yeah.” John’d swallowed hard, as if he were trying to take the Arthur’s word like a pill. “Just… If I ever do anything to that baby, if I ever lay a god damn hand on that kid –“

 

“John –“

 

“No.” John’s eyes had been cold and hard and serious as a dead man’s, and they’d bitten into Arthur’s heart. He’d taken Arthur’s hand from his shoulder and held it tight, so tight Arthur’s knuckles had ground together, as if the pain would make the words stick in his brain. “If I _ever_ touch that kid, I want you to put a fuckin' bullet between my eyes. Bash my god damn skull in, if you have to. You hear me, Morgan? I do  _that_ to that baby, and you kill me. No mercy.”

 

Arthur’d squeezed John’s hand, thin-fingered and calloused, in his own big palm.

 

“Sure, John.”

 

 

 

When Ms Rebecca had finally let them in to see the baby, the sun had just begun to edge towards the horizon, diluting the dark black of night into the denim blue of early, early morning. Arthur remembers how when she’d handed John the baby, swaddled in an old, bloodstained shirt – a shirt that had once been John’s, and Arthur’s before him – John had made a choked, broken noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

 

“You got yourself a baby boy, Mr Marston,” Rebecca'd said, and when John had whispered a tiny “Thank you, thank you, Christ thank you” through tears Arthur’d pretended not to see, Arthur’d known  John hadn’t been talking to her.

 

He’d held the baby for only a few short minutes before he’d passed the bundle off to Arthur, the same way he’d always passed things he couldn’t handle off to Arthur.

 

“Lookit him,” John had sniffled, sounding more like a frightened little boy than Arthur’d ever known him to.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Jack'd been a healthy baby, wrinkled and pink and squealing in a way that reminded Arthur of a piglet. Healthy, but still so small; tiny in a way that’d made Arthur want to squeeze him too tightly, as if he could press the kid through the boney cage of his chest and straight into his heart. It was a suffocating feeling he’d always recognized as love.

 

They’d stood there in silence for a moment, Arthur gently swaying with John’s son in his arms, John himself still trying to pretend as if he hadn’t been crying not two minutes before. Then, Arthur’d leaned in close, voice low to keep Abigail from hearing.

 

“He looks like you, Johnny,” Arthur’d muttered, unable to contain his smile as he did. “Ugly as sin.”

 

John had laughed along with Arthur, then cuffed him hard in the side of the head.

 

***

 

When Dutch had held the boy for the first time, cooing in soft tones like far-off thunder, Arthur’s gut had twisted itself into a hard, sickly knot – he couldn’t say why, only that the familiar cold fist of dread had gripped him then.

 

“He’s a strong one, Hosea, I can tell,” Dutch'd said, sounding as proud as if he’d been the boys flesh-and-blood grandfather.

“Our little prince. He’ll want for nothing, Abigail, I can assure you that. This boy will have a better life than any of us've had, even if I have to throw myself from the highest peak to bring it about.

“We are gunna raise this boy up right.”

 

The fist gripped tighter.

 

 

 

Unsurprisingly, the novelty of Jack had worn off quick – it’d only taken about a week of the infant’s colicky screaming at all hours of the night to stop Dutch fawning over him quite so fondly.  

 

Still, not a week after Jack’d been born, something gnawing and anxious had driven Arthur to Dutch’s tent, Arthur having long since graduated to his own private accommodations, sparse as they’d been.

 

He’d outgrown sitting in the man’s lap by that time, too, and once inside had instead laid himself out over the big, sturdy table Dutch used for planning and plotting; had spread his thick thighs for Dutch to stand between and hoisted a leg up as if he meant to put it behind his ear, baring himself to Dutch unashamedly, the way he knew Dutch’d always enjoyed. When Dutch had slid two thick, slick fingers inside him, a shiver had run up Arthur’s spine; not cold, but chilled to the bone nonetheless.

 

His big, hard man’s body, all muscle and tightly coiled anger, had felt small, the way Dutch always made him feel small, when Dutch had fucked him that night, hard and fast and bruising until the wet smack of skin on skin had rattled around in Arthur’s brain like an empty can and hot, wet semen had spattered on his face like blood.

 

Afterwards, when Dutch was happy and satiated and had been stroking Arthur off in slow, languid strokes, a fresh-lit cigar clenched between his teeth, Arthur’d known it was safe to ask the question what’d brought him there that evening.

 

“Dutch,” he’d gasped as the man had run his thumb over the dark head of Arthur’s cock in the well-practiced way that’d always gotten Arthur leaking and groaning in pleasure, without fail. “Dutch, you ever – you ever had another boy?”

 

“Another boy like you, you mean?” Dutch’d replied, smiling warmly. “You know you’re my one and only, son. Ain’t no one in the world got what you and me got, not even John. I don’t love nobody like I love you, boy.”

 

He’d twisted his wrist just so then, and Arthur’d come with the low, breathless groan he knew Dutch liked to hear. Something like relief, however temporary, had washed over him even as the haze of his orgasm abated – Dutch didn’t do this with anyone else. Didn’t do it _to_ anyone else.

 

If it had been jealousy he’d been feeling, cold and clammy like a dead man’s hand, it had waned, if only minutely. Dutch was nothing if not unpredictable, but at least for the time being, Arthur’d been satisfied.

 

***

 

For nearly a week after John’d left without word or warning, Arthur’d been carefully ambivalent about the whole thing. It weren’t unusual for any one of them to be gone for a day or three, even longer if the lead was particularly good or the crime particularly bad; Arthur’d figured it was one or the other, or maybe John’d gotten turned around in the wilderness. Figured he’d be home with a take and a tale in no time at all.

 

After the second week, Arthur’d gotten angry, so angry he’d sworn if he ever saw the cowardly fool again he’d kill the man with his own bare hands. John had abandoned them all and the baby besides, had tucked tail and run and left Arthur holding the reins, same as he always did when things got too tough for him to handle.

 

Arthur’d hated him for it, at that time;  it weren’t like Arthur’d never wanted to run before, weren’t like he didn’t know the shame and anger and match-spark of fear that’d lit a fire under John’s ass – he’d known better than anyone, probably. He’d even wanted to run, too, plenty of times, but had stayed.

 

In spite of it all, Arthur had stayed. Why couldn’t John have just manned up and _stayed_?

 

After a month, whether or not John’d run out on them didn’t seem to matter much, in the face of the fact he’d probably up and died somewhere out there;  shot or hanged or mauled by a pack of rabid wolves, for all anyone knew.

 

 

 

It was the dreams of it, the nasty, visceral nightmares what’d driven Arthur to Abigail’s tent not six weeks after John’d disappeared. He’d dreamed of John that night, drowned in a lake somewhere. Seen it clear as day; bloated and waterlogged, dark eyes made milky white in death, flesh pale and putrefying and sloughing off in great chunks to be feasted on by fish and worms. Dreamed of John’s bones washing up on some distant shore, abandoned and lonesome, bleached white by the sun. Dreamed of John, gasping and screaming as black waters swallowed him whole.

 

Arthur’d woke up gasping, heart thundering like hoofbeats; his fingers had trembled as he’d smoked, a useless attempt at calming his frayed nerves. He hadn’t wanted to go back to sleep, then, not alone, not with John’s raspy, grating voice still ringing fresh in his ears.

 

Later, he’d tell himself he only went to Abigail’s tent instead of Dutch’s on account of her lamp being lit.

 

She’d been up giving Jack a midnight meal, and had ushered Arthur in while the babe was still at her breast – snuffling and suckling in a quiet, hungry way that’d reminded Arthur of the dog he’d had when he was just a boy.

 

Her hair’d been down, and she’d had on only a nightgown, the shoulder of which she’d pulled down low to expose her breast for feeding, but even so Arthur’d felt nothing but the new maternal warmth of her, the safety of the moment. Just a mother and baby, innocent and unpresumptuous and without expectation.

 

“What’s bothering you, Arthur?” she’d asked, her voice soft as goose down. She’d propped the baby up on her shoulder to burp him, and her breast had still been out, the nipple raw and chapped and peaked in the night time chill.

 

“I ain’t bothered.” Her skin had been soft and warm when he'd pulled the shoulder of her nightgown up for her, had sat beside her on the narrow cot and leaned his head against her shoulder. “Just thought you might be lonesome, is all.”

 

“Now why would I be lonesome?” She’d’ve been convincingly nonchalant if her voice hadn’t sounded wet and quivering.

 

“’Cause I’m lonesome, too. I miss him, Abby.”

 

“Well then, we can miss him together, I s’pose.”

 

They’d sat together, quiet, for a long while after that, baby Jack gone back to sleep and lying swaddled in her lap. She’d cried a bit as they’d sat, soundless and shaking and stubborn in her way, her head laid on top of Arthur’s, his cheek still pressed to her shoulder. If she’d noticed he’d been crying too, felt the warm spatter of a tear or heard his muffled, hitching breath, she hadn’t said anything. He’d loved her for that.

 

***

 

Winter’d come early that year, cold and harsh and sudden, but they’d forgone their usual southward migration in spite of it all; Stevie Dugan and George Sullivan had both been wanted men the state down, and it would’ve been no good trying to run from the law with a baby in their midst. Instead, they’d booted a couple of rum-runners from a little cabin in the woods at the base of the Grizzlies and settled in for the season.

 

The cabin hadn’t been large enough to accommodate the lot of them, being only a single room, but it’d had a fireplace and a pot-bellied stove, perfect for keeping a little baby warm through the winter months. Arthur still remembers how it’d started to snow big, fluffy flakes as they’d begun to set up camp; Jack’s first snowfall.

 

“Mrs Grimshaw, I’m ‘bout to run down to the creek, grab a couple buckets of water. D'you mind settin’ me up in the cabin?”

 

Susan had looked taken aback; she’d only just begun growing grey then, had yet to perfect the harsh stoicism he’d so admired in her in her later years.

 

“That’s where Mrs Mar – Where Abigail and little Jackie will be, Arthur. It really isn’t proper…”

 

“Please, Susan.”

 

The way he’d looked at her must’ve been awful pathetic, because her face had grown soft and she’d smiled at him sadly, as if there was something pitiable about how he’d looked, then. Maybe she’d seen the lonesome, scared little boy he’d been before, the one he had so often felt like, even after age had made him thick and strong.

 

“Alright,” she’d said, and there'd been no real bite to her words when she’d continued, “but don’t say I never did nothing for you, Mr Morgan.”

 

 

 

Abigail’d argued, if only out of politeness, giving Arthur an out of bunking with them if wanted it. But he hadn’t.

 

“Arthur, you ain’t gotta do this,” she’d said plaintively over his shoulder as he’d built a fire in the hearth of the little cabin that night. “Me and the baby, we’re up all hours of the night and he’s still fussy as all get-out, you won’t get a moment’s rest in here. You’ll be miserable.”

 

He didn’t tell her, then, that he didn’t sleep much anyhow, not anymore. Didn’t tell her that if it weren’t nightmares of John’s corpse swinging from a Joshua tree, it was vague memory-dreams of hands parting his thighs to spread him open and the sick, gutless feeling of being pushed into like the slow slide of a knife through raw meat. He didn’t tell her that he weren’t much worried about rest, now. Didn’t tell her that he was already miserable.

 

“You’ll need someone to keep the fire going in the night, keep the two of you from freezing to death,” he’d explained instead. “I got sick one winter from the cold, nearly died from it. The force of Dutch’s will might’ve been the only thing what’d kept me alive; no offense to Dutch, but I’d rather have a little more than that to protect Jackie.”

 

The fire had sprung to life in the hearth, and Arthur had sat back with a sigh. Abigail had handed him the baby and spoke as she moved around the room, busying herself with making a home out of what little had been left behind.

 

“Dutch … he’s a good man,” she’d said as she’d hung a kettle to boil.

 

“Sure.”

 

“He raised you up good. John, too. I want – I _wanted_   Jack to have a daddy like Dutch.”

 

He’d felt as if all the air had been sucked from his lungs, the way it had the first time he’d been shot – the bullet had only grazed him, but for it Dutch had kicked him in the ribs so hard they’d broke and his lung’d collapsed.

 

“No, you don’t.”

 

***

 

It’d only taken days for Dutch to summon Arthur to his tent, after that, and even if Arthur’d expected the interrogation, he’d still been nervous; even the swig of nasty, noxious moonshine he’d swallowed before entering had done little to calm him.

 

“What are you doing with John’s woman, boy?” Dutch’s voice had been cold and hard like steel, his syllables sharp and pointed. It wasn’t a question he’d meant for Arthur to answer.

 

“Nothin’.”

 

Dutch’d slapped him hard, the crack of skin-on-skin loud as a gunshot in the evening quiet – whole camp’d probably heard. The sting of it had brought tears to Arthur’s eyes.

 

“Don’t lie to me, boy. Now, I will ask again, and if you wish for this to remain a civil conversation, you will answer me truthfully. So, what, exactly, are you doing bunking with the late Mr Marston’s _widow,_ Arthur?”

 

“Nothin’!” He remembers how small he’d felt then, dwarfed by the storm of Dutch’s anger, overwhelmed by the flood of his disappointment. He’d felt like a little boy. “I swear Dutch, I ain’t done a thing. I’m just helping with the baby, that’s it. I ain’t laid a hand on the woman, Dutch. Abby’s all alone now, and I just – I just wanted to keep him safe, is all. “

 

What had he wanted to keep Jack safe from then? He couldn’t say.

 

Arthur’d flinched when Dutch had raised his hand, but he’d only reached out to rest it on the back of Arthur’s neck; used it to draw him into a soft, suffocating embrace, pressing Arthur’s face into the warm crook of his neck, where the familiar smells of smoke and stale sweat always seemed to live. Dutch’s fingers had curled into the short, fine hair at the nape of Arthur’s neck, not pulling but simply holding him there, keeping him close.

 

“Oh, Arthur, my boy,” Dutch'd sighed, and the sound of it had put a railroad spike through Arthur’s hammering heart. “Forgive me, son. You know I love you.”

 

“I know.” His voice had sounded sad and weak, muffled against Dutch's shoulder.

 

“I am just under so much pressure, son, what with this mess with Stevie and George, and John being, being gone. And the winter has always been so hard on you, your poor lungs, you know that. I just can’t help but worry for you, and you know how I get when I worry for you. 

“I only get like this because I love you so much. 'Cause you’re mine, my boy. Mine. You know that, right, Arthur?”

 

“I know.”

 

Dutch had drawn back, held Arthur at arm’s length and looked at him with those big, dark eyes that Arthur’d so often drowned in. He’d felt like a dead man, cold and serious, looking into those dark eyes then.

 

“Let me make it up to you.”

 

He’d wanted to run.

 

“Sure, Dutch.”

 

***

When spring finally rolled around, bringing with it melting snow and soaked socks, Arthur’d been sad to see the winter go, truthfully. Watching Jack cut his first tooth and learn to crawl on that creaky cabin floor; taking warm midday naps with the baby sprawled across his chest; sitting on the lumpy bed, his head on Abigail’s shoulder as they’d chatted quietly in the warm glow of the fire; it’d been almost peaceful, at times, and when he wasn’t thinking of John or Dutch or the past or the future, he’d almost been happy.

 

His birthday had passed with little fanfare, the same as it always did. Over morning coffee, Hosea’d slipped a set of fine artist’s pencils and a little knife with which to sharpen them into the pocket of his coat. When he’d returned from guard duty, soaked from slogging through melting snow as he’d patrolled the perimeter, Mrs Grimshaw had pressed a pack of cigarettes into his hand and told him she’d sent Davey down to the creek to fetch water for dinner, and that Arthur could go lay down if he’d liked.

 

After dinner that night, Dutch had produced two bottles of liquor – a truly awful jug of moonshine that’d had them all coughing from the burn of it, and a small flask of brandy that looked so expensive Arthur would have thought it too good to drink if he hadn’t been certain Dutch had  stolen it. They’d stayed up late, til damn near every star in the sky’d came out, getting drunk on moonshine and singing along to Javier’s old, tuneless guitar, in spite of the fact Javier was the only one of them what could carry a tune at all.

 

He’d felt whiskey-warm and happy drunk when he’d flopped on to his rickety cot that night, so late it’d been early, and he’d slept sounder than he had all winter. It weren’t til he’d awoken, with a crick in his neck and a moonshine hangover so wicked he had thought he’d go blind from it, that he’d found the last gift squashed beneath him, left on his bed the night previous and slept on accordingly.

 

It’d been a small token, simple and plain, worth nothing to anyone that weren’t him; maybe that was why he’d love it so. Something secret, shared only between he and Abigail, safe from anything outside that brief, blessed winter when he’d almost been happy.

 

A pair of socks, knitted from thick, warm wool – the same socks he’d watched Abigail knit not three weeks prior, fascinated by the quick, sharp movements of her delicate hummingbird hands. They’d been wrapped in a plain black kerchief that he’d tied around his neck and a note, scrawled on a scrap of paper in Abigail’s tight, neat handwriting.

 

 _To keep you warm and to keep you safe_ , it’d read. _The way you did us._

_Love, A & J._

 

***

When the weather has finally warmed, they’d packed their things and left the little cabin behind, headed west once again. Thinking about it now, Arthur doesn’t know why he’d been surprised John had found them so easy; they’d always traveled the country in long, lazy loops, had kept at it until Jack’d been about two and Dutch had decided they needed one last, big score before settling down for good.

 

It’d been a surreal thing, the day John’d come back; time had seemed to stand still, the lot of them stood frozen and staring as they’d watch the body of a man they’d thought dead for nearly a year calmly march through the camp, pull a small stack of bills from his bag, and place it gently in the collections box. When he didn’t disappear like a ghost into the ether, Arthur’d thought he might have finally lost it.

 

Camp had been in an uproar after that, the relief of it like the lifting of a veil from a canary's cage – they’d been so loud and so drunk that night, Arthur’d been sure the law would come running.

 

Afterwards, when Hosea was wrapping Arthur’s bruised and bloodied knuckles, he’d told Arthur the story of the Prodigal Son Returned. He’d explained it to Arthur in that soft, maternal manner he’d always seemed to have; the wise, knowing voice that made Arthur feel warm and adored and abandoned all at once.

 

As the party had roared on and the liquored had flowed, that first night John’d been back, Arthur had drank, seeking to drown the anger that burned, hot and red like the tip of a cigarette, just below the surface of him. Ended up fueling the fire and burning the whole damn thing to the ground, same as he always managed to do – he just never learned.

 

He’d been standing at the edge of camp, smoking and swilling as he’d gazed moodily out over the still, polished-glass surface of the lake, when John’d come to stand beside him, swaying like a branch in the breeze from the drink.

 

They’d stood together, silent and unfamiliar, for a long moment. Arthur remembers he’d been so tense then, his whole body tight and knotted with anger, his bitten-down fingernails biting into his calloused palms  – same as they had the night before, when Dutch had pushed his cock between Arthur’s thighs as if he were still a kid.

 

“You should’ve stayed gone,” he’d bitten out, flicking the butt of his cigarette into the shallow darkness.

 

“Why?” John’d spat, gritty voice slurred from the booze. “So you could keep on fucking my wife, Morgan?”

 

Arthur’d hauled off and punched him hard in the chin, had followed him to the ground to beat on his face, pummeling him until Abigail had yelled, shrill and panicked, “Stop! Stop, Arthur, please, you’re killing him, you’re killing him, _stop!”_

 

He hadn’t had the words for it then, never had; maybe he’d hoped he could pound the message into John, the same way every lesson he’d ever learned had been pounded into him, one way or another. As if his fists could somehow communicate the things he’d kept locked inside since that first night with the book and the cigar and that lesson on what it meant to be a man. As if John could somehow trace the pain back to Arthur’s anger and to the fear that festered beneath it all like a deadly infection, pestilent and ugly.

 

That poison fear that had kept him from saying what he’d meant, when he said what he did, that kept him from explaining.

 

John had been gone, and Arthur had stayed, same as he’d always stayed. John had run, the way Arthur had always, always wanted to run. Even if it had been traitorous and cowardly, even if he’d left his family behind, even if John _had_ been dead, at least he’d been free; free in a way Arthur had always dreamed of being, since he was nearly sixteen and suffocating under the weight of Dutch’s relentless love.

 

John had been free, and the fool had come back, and in that moment, Arthur’d hated him for that.

**Author's Note:**

> i just started chapter 6 and i wish i was dead now lol :)))
> 
> here i kind of wanted to explore the different ways childhood sexual abuse can inform ones relationship with siblings and children - it's not unusual for people to endure ongoing abuse in order to try and protect others from their abusers, and the trapped feeling of that. I also think a lot of people worry about going on to abuse others the way they were abused, and that could be the root of John's absence and distance as a father. 
> 
> I think this is the last piece in this universe as part of like, a linear storyline; there are other little vignettes that i'd like to explore that take place in this pre-game time period, but first i need some comfort for all this hurt. ;; 
> 
> bonus: you can now shout at me about sad cowboys on the tumblr i made just for sad cowboys, assless-chapstick.tumblr.com  
> git at me, boah


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